


this is proof i am not alone

by relationshipcrimes



Series: prompt fics 1 [3]
Category: Persona 3
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22949980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relationshipcrimes/pseuds/relationshipcrimes
Summary: Ryoji tries to stay away from Minato during the month of December.
Relationships: Arisato Minato/Mochizuki Ryoji
Series: prompt fics 1 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649317
Comments: 1
Kudos: 121





	this is proof i am not alone

During the month of December, Ryoji spends a lot of time alone. Consciousness expands as apathy grows. His human form begins to stretch and shudder. He can feel himself where the spaces grow inside others; wherever the emptiness is, the emptiness yearns for Nyx, and wherever there is a yearning for Nyx, there is Ryoji.

But he tries to keep his head inside his head, so to speak. He tries to see the snow in front of him, through his own two eyes. He doesn’t go to school, but he prowls the sidewalks of Port Island, still in his school uniform, sometimes, watching people pass. He isn’t sure if he wants to commit their faces to memory or if he wants to forget them, knowing them to be dust in the wind, but either way, he comes to know them without his will, as easily as he knows the beat of his own heart.

And best of all, he knows the cavity inside Minato Arisato’s chest, where Ryoji had resided for ten long years. He knows where that great nothing pulses, framed and made by the ribs around it. When Ryoji closes his eyes, he can feel it growing inside Minato too, threatening to collapse him from the inside out. Even now, separated into two bodies, and divided across the island, they are connected. Ryoji can close his eyes and touch his chest and feel Minato at the top of the Gekkoukan school building at the dead of night, and think: _Here. This is proof that I am not alone. We are the same, we are still one. I am thou. Thou art I._

*

On the fifth night of Minato’s four AM trip to the top of Gekkoukan, Minato stands up. Slowly, he climbs over the fence, eyes pinched against the metal’s bitter cold. He hops over and stands on the ledge of Gekkoukan. He’s not as high as he would be at the peak of Tartarus, of course, had Minato not come many hours after Tartarus had gone back to sleep for the night. But it’s still high enough to kill him.

“You came,” says Minato, when Ryoji peels himself out of the dark.

“There’s still fourteen days to December 31st,” says Ryoji.

Minato doesn’t say anything. He sits on the snowy ledge and looks up at the moon, like it’s fun to dangle his feet four stories up off the ground.

For a boy who Ryoji had spent ten years inside the heart of, he’s still so difficult to read. The emptiness yawns wide in Minato’s chest, but the call for Nyx is--unsteady. It’s not like the rest of them.

“You don’t have to make any decision until December 31st,” says Ryoji. _And this is not the decision I hoped for._

“I know.” There’s a long, long silence, where Ryoji wonders what else he’s supposed to say. Minato looks back up at the moon. Ryoji wonders frequently if Minato isn’t actually difficult to read, and if maybe Minato is just a true-blue space cadet. Ryoji might know the shape of Minato’s heart, but not what goes on in his head. “I’m not going to jump,” says Minato eventually, like the idea that Ryoji might be thinking that comes as a surprise to him that he only just put together.

It surprises a nervous laugh out of Ryoji. It sounds human even to Ryoji’s own ears. “Oh! How reassuring.” _Thank goodness you won’t die now, so that I can kill you later_. “How reassuring,” he says again, softer.

“I talked to the others,” says Minato.

“You need not make a decision before the end of the year.”

Minato tilts his head, like there isn’t fourteen days left, and Minato isn’t actively trying to bring the end of the world faster by trying to make his decisions early. “I should go,” says Ryoji. They weren’t supposed to see each other again until December 31st, and not just because Minato was supposed to have fourteen more days to live in relative peace before the end. Ryoji wanted a little peace of his own.

“But I wanted to talk to you.”

Ryoji smiles. “Only the opinions of your friends matter here, I’m afraid. And you know what I ask of you.”

“I just wanted to see you.”

 _What good does that do?_ Ryoji thinks. Nyx will come regardless. How Minato squirms and thrashes before the end only makes the bleeding worse. “I’ll return in fourteen days,” Ryoji replies.

“I missed being together.”

When Ryoji dares to turn back around, Minato has his eyes closed, head tilted up to the moon, hand pressed to his chest, like Ryoji does himself. Ryoji isn’t sure if he got that from Minato, or Minato got that from Ryoji. “I can feel where you were. Can’t you?”

Of course he does. _I am thou, thou art I_. Ryoji only wishes their relationship were one between two humans.

“This is not the deal,” Ryoji reminds him kindly. “I should not have come. We shall meet again on the last night of the--”

Minato’s one eye opens wide. “No. Wait,” he says.

“Go home, Minato.”

“It’s not the same without you with me.”

“The time we spent together is precious to me. But it’s come to an end.”

“Just for tonight,” says Minato suddenly. Like it’s been ripped out of him, straight from that growing, gnawing hole at the center of his chest, where Ryoji used to be, where the call for Nyx should be.

Ryoji really wishes he’d never come to this roof. “Please don’t ask me this.”

“Just one.” When Ryoji only sinks his face deeper into his scarf, Minato’s hands clench hard around the fence bars. His one eye is luminous in the dark. “What’s the point of having fourteen more days if I can’t…?”

Fourteen more days to be with the people he loves, and if he kills Ryoji at the end of it, then a little more time to live in blissful ignorance. It’s all the grace Ryoji can manage, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough, but he’d thought that it’d be at least _something_.

Minato holds out his hands. At last, Ryoji puts one foot on the bottom bar of the fence. Hesitates, one last time. And then he hops over the fence, his balance unnatural, and lowers himself carefully to sit besides Minato.

Just like they used to when Minato was a child, making friends with the strange demons who came to him in the dark, they curl up against each other in the cold night. There is no wind. There is no snow. If Ryoji closes his eyes, he can feel more of Minato’s warmth than he can the December chill.

There are fourteen more days until the end. _Just for tonight_ , Ryoji thinks. It will be the end soon. There is no use resisting. But even so, Ryoji feels his human arms hold Minato tight, and he can’t bring himself to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter [@r_crimes](https://twitter.com/r_crimes)  
> tumblr [@akechicrimes](http://akechicrimes.tumblr.com)


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